One of Apple's e-textbook partners believes the iPad 3 and the drop in price of the iPad 2 will bring in the era of mass e-textbook adoption.

McGraw Hill Education, which signed on as a top partner in Apple's e-textbook launch in January 2012, sees the iPad 3 taking the use of e-textbooks to another level with its high resolution and fast LTE connectivity. The tablet will give students a whole new learning experience with vivid pictures, videos, charts, etc. needed for school, as well as revolutionary features through iBooks that allows for note-taking.

"Extraordinarily high resolutions really unlock the potential of 'pinch to zoom' functionality," said Vineet Madan, vice president of McGraw Hill Education. "You can already see this to a large extent in iBooks and on Inkling's books, but the future will enable completely mind-blowing experiences for students. Imagine zooming in again and again on a cell structure in biology, for example, and seeing every level with the same crispness and clarity.

"Think about LTE. You could be anywhere and can immediately pull up all sorts of high-res, data-rich content. You can stream it instantaneously and you don't have pulling down gigs and gigs of content and storing it on the app locally."

The iPad 3, which was announced earlier this month by Apple CEO Tim Cook in San Francisco, offers 2048x1536 resolution as well as 4G LTE connectivity and a 10-hour battery life. Storage options include 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB.

In addition to the iPad 3, Madan praised the iPad 2 for its lower price, which will allow students to adopt the device and e-textbooks much more easily. The iPad 2's price fell to $399 for 16GB when the iPad 3 was announced.

"The iPad 2 is still a phenomenally powerful device," said Madan. "Our content performs incredibly well on that device. At the same time, we can build better things for new iPad."

Madan explained that simply using textbooks on the iPad is not all students can look forward to with these devices. Through several different apps, the iPad 2 or 3 can be used to record college lectures and perform other academic functions as well.

In January 2012, Apple announced a new textbook and publishing initiative with iBooks 2 and iBook Author, which aim to put more e-textbooks on Apple devices and easily deliver them to students.